Volume 2

368 Life of Jesus Christ
chariot, one in front and two behind. They were indescribably
lovely, delicately formed animals of the size
perhaps of a large roe, snow-white, with long, white,
silken hair. Their limbs were very slender, their head always
in motion, and on their forehead was an elegant
horn bent somewhat toward the front. On the day that
Elias was taken up to Heaven, I saw his chariot drawn
by the same kind of animals.
I saw also the history of Eliseus and the Sunamitess.
Eliseus performed prodigies even more wonderful than
those of Elias, and in his dress and manners there was
something more elegant and refined. Elias was wholly a
man of God with nothing in his manners modelled after
other men. He was something like John the Baptist; they
were men of the same stamp. I saw also how Giezi, the
servant of Eliseus, ran after the man whom his master
had cured of leprosy (Naaman). It was night and Eliseus
was asleep. Giezi overtook Naaman at the Jordan and
demanded presents from him in the name of his master.
On the next day Giezi was pursuing his work as if
nothing had happened (he was making light wooden
screens to be used as partitions between sleeping apartments)
when Eliseus asked him: "Where hast thou been?"
and exposed to him all that had taken place the previous
night. The servant was punished with leprosy, which he
transmitted to his posterity.
As the idolatry practiced by the human race, the
adoration of animals and idols in the early times, the repeated
lapsing of the Israelites into the same, and the
great mercy of God in sending them the Prophets were
shown me, and I was wondering how men could adore
such abomination, I had a vision in which I saw that the
same abomination still exists on the earth, though in a
form less material, more spiritual. I saw innumerable visions
throughout the whole world of idolatry infecting
even Christianity, and I saw it indeed in almost all the